After The FallAuthor: Carissa LuskGenre: Paranormal Romance

Amity cries out into the darkness that surrounds her, hoping for a solitary voice to provide direction; she hears two.She has an epic love for Alexander, yet the loneliness brought on by the miles that separate them can only be curbed by the cryptic affection of Marcus Riley. Amity can’t understand the strange familiarity she finds in the wild blue of Marcus’s eyes, but she will soon learn his secret.

Plagued with dreams and memories of lives beyond her own, a tragic fate will emerge from the ashes of a love scorned. Eventually, she will discover the dark truth that will leave her running for her life, and she will learn who sacrificed everything to save it.

​I thought for one second that I may have overreacted, but then Marcus spoke again. “It was never my intention to be your friend,” he grumbled.I flinched and turned around to face him again, squeezing my hands into fists at my sides. A thousand curses filled my mind, and tears flooded my eyes for some inexplicable reason. I fought them back.“Seriously?” I laid on the sarcasm. “We can be friends, right? Those were your words less than a week ago!” My voice grew louder with each syllable. I took a breath to calm myself. “I don’t understand you,” I sputtered and spun away from him while a fine mist of rain saturated the air and clung to my face. I took two fast steps before he spoke again, halting me.“You’re right. You don’t understand,” he called after me. His tone had calmed slightly. “You...,” he faltered. “You fill all my thoughts, my dreams...,” he trailed off.Still facing away from him, I gasped and my heart sunk to my knees. Why would he say those things? I stood frozen, reluctant to turn around, my mind racing. He walked closer to me, close enough that his breath faintly tickled my ear. My body tensed.“You see, Amity, I never meant to be your friend,” he spoke in a near whisper.I forced myself to face him, peering into his eyes, but words still escaped me.“The poem is for you,” he admitted.“Did you really dream it?” I could barely breath with him that close.“Yes. It was real,” he answered and held his blue eyes on me.Lightning flashed far away and thunder boomed. The mist started to pitter patter for a second before it turned into a hard, cold rain. Then I remembered Alex—beautiful, sweet, faithful Alex. I looked down at my feet to dodge Marcus’s stare.“I have to go,” I stressed, turning once more. I had taken only a couple of steps when I barely heard Marcus speak again.“What the hell,” he murmured to himself as if he were agreeing to some proposed course of action that I didn’t hear. In two fluid steps, he was close behind me. His right hand took hold of mine to stop me. I turned halfway, and for a moment his warm breath grazed my face. My heart raced even faster.I froze again when he leaned closer and pressed his lips against mine. They were soft and damp from the rain, and I didn’t pull away. I couldn’t pull away. I let him kiss me. Without thought of anything else, without thought of right and wrong, I let him, and I returned it like I’d been missing his lips for a hundred years.

Carissa Lusk grew up in a small town in West Virginia and never moved far from home. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Concord College. She credits her love of reading and writing to Kate Chopin, Emily Bronte, and her mom. After the Fall is Carissa's debut novel.